Asian caucus, DHS talk immigration

The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus is rolling out its own set of recommendations for the Obama administration on how it can ease its deportation and immigration enforcement policies.

The group, led by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), is meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson Wednesday on Capitol Hill to offer their proposal, which spans eight pages.

Story Continued Below

Among its top suggestions is to expand a current program that defers deportations for young undocumented immigrants to a broader population of people living here illegally. Those recommendations are similar to ones made by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other advocates.

That would be one way to keep families together, lawmakers said. About 5.1 million children in the United States live in mixed-status families — meaning one person could be here legally when another in the family is not – and 4 million of those children are U.S. citizens, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

“As DHS conducts its review of enforcement policies and practices, we strongly urge you to take bold action to stop the pain inflicted on families through deportations and detention,” the lawmakers wrote in the memo, obtained by POLITICO.

Chu, in an interview, said: “This is a key and critical recommendation for us.”

The Asian caucus also calls for changes to how the Obama administration enforces immigration laws that would “promote fairness and family unity,” according to the memo. One such change would be to not prioritize for deportations undocumented immigrants whose sole crime is violating immigration law.

Lawmakers also want a way to expand the current initiative to defer deportations for young undocumented immigrants. CAPAC members are seeking acceptance from the administration of all undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before the age of 16, regardless of current age. Right now, the program is limited to those who were born after June 15, 1981.

Under heavy criticism from immigration reform advocates, President Barack Obama announced that his administration will launch a review of its deportation policies to see if they can be administered more humanely. Johnson, who is leading the review, said in an ABC News interview aired Sunday that the results will come “pretty soon.”

“We hear that the decision will be made within the next few weeks,” Chu said. “In fact, that’s why we hurried to make this meeting so that we could have the input right at the critical time.”